Four Essential Elements for a Proper Call

Review of Session One: Six Wrong Reasons

0:00 Now, just briefly to review and then seek to cover the material for this afternoon before we move into discussion. What I sought to do last week was to set a framework for our study by a consideration of three or four texts of Scripture. Remember, we looked at 2 Timothy 2 to the church's responsibility to commit to faithful men who shall be able to teach others that body of truth given by apostolic authority. Therefore, the church cannot be indifferent.

0:33 The church has this great responsibility and that's one of the reasons why I've decided in conjunction with the elders to have this class that we cannot be indifferent to the charge to discern faithful and able men to whom we can commit truth who in turn shall be able to teach others. And then we looked at Romans 12, 3 and following the responsibility of the individual that every man judge soberly as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith. The individual has a responsibility of honest self-assessment with respect to his gifts. Then we looked at 1 Timothy 3, 1, the passage we'll look at again today indicating that aspirations and ambition to the office of a teaching elder

1:22 is not of itself wrong. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth of good work, but we parallel that with James 3, 1, a warning, be not many of you teachers knowing that we shall receive a heavier judgment. And then with that basic biblical framework before us, I submitted to you six false or wrong motives and reasons for aspiring to a teaching office. And I will only mention them.

1:54 First of all, was an inaccurate assessment of one's own gifts and graces. Secondly, an uncrucified lust for the authority and attention connected with public ministry. Thirdly, an unbalanced concept of spirituality. Fourthly, an inadequate view of the breadth of the qualifications requisite for a teaching and preaching ministry.

2:21 Fifthly, unmet psychological needs for personal identity. And last of all, the unsanctified and unwise ambitions of others. The ambitious mother, the ambitious pastor who wants to say X number of men have gone into the ministry under his influence and leadership. Well, these I say are six of the leading and most frequent wrong reasons why men consider the ministry.

2:51 And sad to say, some in some men, two, three, four, five, maybe all six of these things meet. But be it one or two or any combination of the six, these are not biblical reasons for aspiring to the office of teaching, particularly the office of a teaching and a ruling elder. Spurgeon mentioned several others in his section on the calls of the ministry, which also fit the idea that the ministry is a catchall for general flunkies, a man who have not been able to make it anywhere else so they feel well. The fact that I've not been able to maybe a success in this, that and the other, it must be proof that God is shutting me up to the ministry.

3:34 Well, what it may be is God is shutting you up to face your own laziness and indolence and telling you ought to do something to prepare yourself to excel in some legitimate calling. And so we must never look upon the ministry as a catchall for general flunkies who couldn't make it in any other field. Now, having looked at these wrong reasons, I want to move today to what I would call the four indispensable elements of a biblical call to the Christian ministry. And though I mentioned last week that some of the things had reference to a person who would teach in a local church without rising to the office of a teaching elder, the things that I say today are almost exclusively applicable to the office of the ministry, to the role of a full-time teaching ruling elder,

Introduction: Scope and Owen's Distinction Between Ordinary and Extraordinary Call

4:26 one described in 1 Timothy 5, 17, one who labors in the word and in doctrine. Now, it's not that I'm indifferent to the other facet, we'll come to that in subsequent studies, but this is such a crucial issue and is applicable to so many of you that I felt it necessary to zero in upon it as an item in itself. Now, as we come to this whole matter of what constitutes a call to the Christian ministry, I think the best thing I can do to introduce the subject is to quote from a footnote in Bridges on the Christian ministry, which I would amen a hundred times full volume. Someone remarks that if none were to be admitted into holy orders, which is the term used in Anglicanism for the ministry,

5:16 except those who are possessed of necessary qualifications, there could not possibly be procured or sufficient number of pastors for the supply of our churches. Now, that's a common objection. I'm sure after we've gone over what the requisitions are for this office even today, that the objection may be voiced, if not overtly, at least mentally and inwardly. Well, if we admit none, but such as meet that standard, we wouldn't have enough pastors for our churches, to which I answer that a small number of chosen pastors is preferable to a multitude of unqualified teachers.

5:58 At all hazards, we must adhere to the command of God and lead the result to providence. But in reality, the dearth of pastors is not so generally to be apprehended. To reject those candidates for the ministry whose labors in the church would be wholly fruitless is undoubtedly a work of piety. You see what he say?

6:22 When the church refuses to lay hands upon men whom she's convinced are not biblically qualified and biblically called, this is a work of piety. Others, on the contrary, who are qualified to fulfill the duties of the sacred office, would take encouragement from this exactness and severity, and the ministry would every day be rendered more respectable in the world. And I believe that quote with all my heart. And so my practical concern is not that I shall set the standard beyond what Scripture puts it, but that I might fall short of the biblical standard and thereby be a source of encouragement for some to run whom God has not sent.

7:08 Now, as we come to this matter of the call to the Christian ministry, I think it's necessary that we make a distinction which, as usual, I had to go to the Puritans to find. Bless God for those men who had such sensitivity to spiritual and practical issues. And in going through my nest of Puritan authors, I came across a section in John Owen in which he deals with the call to ministry. And he splits the various calls of God into two basic divisions.

7:42 He says there are extraordinary offices which demand an extraordinary call. And he supports this scripturally. Into the extraordinary offices, the temporary offices, would come prophets, apostles, and he has an excellent case to show that evangelist was a temporary and an extraordinary office. In the building of the apostolic church.

8:14 Now, Owen's thesis is that for these extraordinary offices, there were extraordinary factors comprising a call. With the prophets, generally there was direct revelation. With the prophets and apostles, there was peculiar miracle-working power in many instances. With the evangelist, likewise.

8:36 But, he says, for the ordinary offices of the church, which would be pastors and teachers, ruling elders, teaching elders, there is what he would call the ordinary call. And I think the distinction is a valid one. And just as we dare not allow ourselves to thrust back into this framework, as far as certain gifts are concerned, and there's none of us here who does this to my knowledge, we must be careful that we don't revert to this when it comes to the matter of what constitutes a call to the Christian ministry. And in the light of Ephesians chapter 4, in which pastors and teachers are Christ's abiding gift for the well-being and the edification of the church,

9:27 and since pastor-teachers function as ordinary teaching elders, we must not expect extraordinary facets to the call, but rather ordinary things that are constantly present in the church will comprise the call. Now, it's at this point that we run into our problem. You see, it's the same way with regard to how God saves people. The way in which God saved the apostle Paul was an extraordinary way.

10:00 He saved him by direct revelation from heaven. He saved him by an audible voice, by a visible manifestation of his power. Now, you see, we don't make that the rule for us, but since the ways of the Spirit in the ordinary sense in conversion are diverse, the ways of the Spirit are like the wind, it is hard to formulate what constitutes the steps leading to a true conversion. None of them are exactly the same, so what we have to do is survey the whole field of the Spirit's dealings and try to extract the fundamental, irreducible minimum of principles that are true in every single case.

10:46 You follow me? Now, this is what we must do with regard to the call to the Christian ministry. In no case do all the factors fall into line very neatly in four equally sized packages. I'm going to deal with four factors, which I'm convinced are the indispensable elements of a true call to the ministry.

11:08 However, with some men, the second may be much larger in the whole picture, with some the fourth, with some the first, with others the third, with some the second may be a very elementary or very small or minimal part. But in every case, to some degree or another, these four lines of truth, these four issues will meet in every true call to the ministry in the framework of an ordinary office governed by an ordinary call. Now, I found that distinction very helpful to me, and whereas it clarifies the issue, it also lets us know the complicating factor in the issue, because none of us, I trust, believes that God is speaking by direct revelation and that somewhere in the middle of the night, out in the middle of the wood, you heard a voice saying,

12:07 Go preach. In fact, you've heard the famous illustration of this, the fellow that said he was out plowing one night and he saw big, bright letters in the sky, G-P-C, and he concluded that God had called him to preach. Go preach Christ. And someone said, How do you know God wasn't saying, Go pick corn.

12:26 Well, you see, it was all a matter of how you interpreted the letters in the sky. You see, now, unless you had God infallibly interpret the letters, you can't be sure that that was a call to the ministry, for the call to the ministry will comprise other factors which all the writing in the sky can't cancel or make up the lack of the other requirements. All right. So much for that introductory perspective. Now, I want to give a second one before we come to the four lines of thought.

Bridges' Two Divisions: Internal Call from God and External Call from the Church

12:57 And this one I gleaned out of bridges, and I'm going to be leaning heavily upon the old masters today because, as I said, this is a delicate field. And I believe in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. Bridges divides the elements of the call into two areas. Speaking now of an ordinary call, he says there are two distinct divisions to that call.

13:21 There are those things that come directly from God, and there are those things that come from the church. From God will come the inward constraint, and we'll look at that in a moment. This inward pressure, this godly desire for the ministry, excuse me, and secondly, from God will come the necessary gifts. Now, that's one half of the call. Those things that God gives and confers internally, personally.

13:56 But then he says, from the church, there must come the recognition of the gifts, the recognition of the gifts, and then the formal accrediting of those gifts, which would be, of course, the formal setting apart by a service of ordination. And Bridges goes on to say that in every true call to the ministry, both of these factors will meet the voice of God directly to the individual and then the voice of the church. And I cannot emphasize this enough. And though one could scratch around and find some instance where it was obvious that a man had an internal call and the necessary gifts, and the church would not recognize it, I say that is the rare exception.

14:46 On the other hand, I believe the church is cursed with many who, putting all the emphasis here and failing to recognize this, have run forth unsent and uncalled and have been a blight to the cause of Jesus Christ. All right, so much then for these two basic areas of perspective with reference to the call. What then are the irreducible elements, the fundamental common denominators of every true and valid call to the Christian ministry in an ordinary way? Well, first of all, and the order in these things is not inspired, but it just simply falls into my mind this way.

Element 1: Desire Born of Right Motives

15:29 And it's along these lines that Spurgeon and Bridges and Newton and Owen and some of the others handle them. First of all, there must be desire born of right motives, desire born of right motives. Now, there are several key passages which indicate that this matter of desire is a fundamental issue in the call to the office of a leading teaching and ruling elder. Let's go to the crucial passage, of course, First Timothy chapter three and verse one.

16:26 Faithful is the saying, if a man seeketh is the ASV translation. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. And the ASV indicates that two different words are used in the original. The King James translates two Greek words the same. The ASV translates two different Greek words differently.

16:51 Another plug for the accuracy in most places of the ASV. If a man seeketh, and that word seek is exactly the same word used in chapter six and verse ten. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, which some reaching after. Here's the picture of a man who's determined to be rich, and he's reaching out. He is aspiring. He is ambitious to become wealthy. That's the word used here.

17:24 If any man is reaching out after the office of a bishop, what is that reaching out but intense, conscious, deep, abiding desire? And so if there were no other passage to indicate that personal inward desire is a necessary element, I would rest the whole case on this text alone. But when we turn to a passage like First Peter chapter five, a passage addressed to the elders receive another word used, which indicates that there must be inward desire. First Peter chapter five. Peter, writing to the elders, says, verse two, tend the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight not of constraint but willingly.

18:22 He said, now don't do this because your mama patted your nice little blonde head when you were a little boy and said, now, sonny, when you go off, you're going to be a preacher. He said, now don't you do it by constraint of mama's wishes, by constraint of the pressure of others, but he says this must be done willingly. There must be indigenous, deep desire to take the responsibilities of oversight. If we think of it in terms particularly of the preaching aspect, I believe it's right to say we will experience something like unto what Jeremiah experienced when he said in Jeremiah 20 and verse nine, my word was in my heart as a fire shut up within my bones.

19:09 I was weary with forbearing and I could not stay. Jeremiah had said, I'm going to shut up. I get nothing but trouble when I preach. But he said, I couldn't be shut up because the word was in my heart as a fire shut up within my bones.

19:27 So then there must be desire, but you'll notice I've qualified it desire born of right motives. And if I were to give two or three of the characteristics of right motives, I would use the words borrowing some from bridges and changing it a bit for my own use. First of all, it must be a considerate desire, a considerate desire. That is a desire that faces honestly all of the implications of the Christian ministry as much as one can possibly face them prior to entering upon such an awesome responsibility.

20:16 It must be a desire that is considerate as opposed to romantic, considerate as opposed to unrealistic, considerate as opposed to a very limited concept of the Christian ministry. And so along this line, let me urge you to seek to assess the pressures, the responsibilities, the demands of the Christian ministry in a very realistic way. I've met some young men who actually felt that being in the ministry meant they could spend eight hours a day sitting up in their ivory tower with their old Puritan tomes plopped on their laps,

21:04 sipping tea or coffee and once in a while come down and play with the kids and kiss their wife and make a call or two here or there and back up into the ivory tower. And that was their understanding of the Christian ministry. And they felt frustrated because as students or in their place of business, they couldn't spend all those hours reading the Puritans so they just longed to get into the ministry. Well, my friend, that's a fool's paradox. That is not the Christian ministry. It is not the Christian ministry.

21:35 That's some kind of an idealistic, romantic bubble that will get burst quicker than you can say Jack Rabbit abbreviated. It'll come very, very quickly. So then this desire for the office, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he must recognize what that work is. It is a good work, but it is a work which has a great diversity of responsibilities.

22:03 Therefore, it must be a considerate desire. Secondly, it must also be a constraining desire, a constraining desire. And by that, I mean a desire which grows with the passing of each day, a desire which deepens in one's holiest moments, in one's most spiritually warm moments. This desire is most intense, the desire to spend and be spent for Christ's sake and for the sake of His church and His people.

22:49 Not the desire, you see, to feed my own longings for study or for prominence or something else, but this desire that lays hold of a man, that this is the way I can best serve Christ and His people, to give myself without entanglement to the work of a teaching elder. It must be a constraining desire, one that is most intense in one's holiest moments. And then I want to use one of the old terms, and you'll find it often in the old writers, it must be a disinterested desire. Now, when the old writers used disinterested, they did not mean lacking in interest, they meant lacking in personal ambition.

23:38 A disinterested love is a love that is concerned with its object, not with its self. It must be then disinterested, and I've already hinted at this, a desire born of what this office can mean to the people of God. Born of a desire, what it can mean to the glory of Christ and to the ongoing of the kingdom of Christ. At this point, let me quote from John Newton, whom, by the way, Spurgeon quotes in full, he quotes his whole letter in his lectures to his students.

24:15 He said, when I gave the lecture, I wasn't aware of what Newton had said. He said, you may think I plagiarized, but I didn't. And so he says, I'll give you the letter in full, and so he prints the letter in full at the end of his chapter. But listen to what Newton says about this desire.

24:51 This is what I'm trying to say. A disinterested desire will be one that does not terminate upon what the ministry will mean to me, but upon what it means to Christ and to his people. Now, this desire is with some men almost from the dawn of consciousness. There have been some men who have testified that they felt long before they were even converted, that God had his hand upon them for the ministry.

25:18 I can't quarrel with that. This desire has come to some men almost commensurate with their conversion. Others, I think of a dear friend of mine who had his degree in engineering and who had designed his first bridge. And this is how God began to put the desire in him. He began to be used as a layman, but then he went to behold this great piece of construction.

25:40 The first bridge he designed was completed, and he noticed when they had the very dedication of the bridge, the parts that were painted first at the beginning of the construction had already begun to rust. And he said, is this what I'm spending my life for? And this desire to serve Christ in a different sphere, this desire of dissatisfaction with that present sphere began to grip him, began to take hold of him. Now, he didn't rush off and tell people, I'm called with the ministry. No, no.

26:10 The desire developed to the place where he felt, well, at least if I'm going to serve Christ more effectively as a layman, I've got to have some theological training. So still not declaring himself, to my knowledge, called because other factors enter in. This is just one part of it. He then began to take the steps, and I only use the illustration to show that this desire will come at varying stages, but the desire must be there.

Element 2: Graces Indicating Genuine Mature Christian Experience

26:36 All right. The second thing, second element in a biblical call to the ministry will be, grace is indicating genuine, mature Christian experience. Grace is indicating genuine, mature, and I underline that word, mature Christian experience. And here we come back to the most pivotal passage once more, First Timothy chapter three.

27:15 Now, when you read the list of the requirements for the office of a bishop, I'm certain you're aware of the fact that the dominant requirement is in the realm of Christian grace, not gifts. The bishop therefore must be, in that little particle day, delta epsilon yota has great force in it. It's the same word used when it says of our Lord, he must needs go to Jerusalem and suffer and be killed and be raised again the third day. A bishop must be, whatever else he is or isn't, this he must be without reproach, husband of one wife, self-controlled, sober-minded, orderly, given to hospitality.

28:06 Let's skip the act to teach for a moment. No brawler, no striker, gentle, not contentious, no lover of money, ruling his own house, not a novice. What is he saying? He's saying that there must be an evident display of graces that are genuine and mature.

28:30 And the genuineness is seen in the balanced godliness. Imbalanced godliness can be faked pretty well. But when you see balanced godliness, a man who by temperament might give the impression of being zealous, but when you see him being patient, you know grace has been at work. There's the other man who temperamentally might be patient, but when you see him driven with zeal, you know grace has been at work.

28:58 And that's why he gives this balanced, comprehensive overview of piety. A man might seem to be very self-controlled, but he can be a tyrant and he won't be able to rule his house in love. I've met some men very disciplined, very self-controlled, but I wouldn't want to live within three blocks of them. They were tyrants, tyrants. They had no heart. They were men of steel, not men of flesh. And they wreck and ruin any church, any flock of God.

29:31 So you see, he says, the bishop must be. He must be one who evidences graces which are reflective of genuine, mature Christian experience. So then, the desire to be holy must be stronger than the desire to preach and to teach, or the desire to preach and to teach is under suspicion. I'm always suspicious when a guy's chomping at the bit to teach, and he's not chomping at the bit in the secret place, that God will subdue his lust and conquer his passions and make him more like the Savior.

30:14 I'm scared to death of that kind of ambition, because these graces in their mature expression are not cultivated overnight. And so there must be those graces of genuine, mature Christian experience. And they don't come quickly. They don't come easily.

30:38 And I would say to you men who are uncertain as to your call, one thing is certain, you never can be too holy. You never can be too balanced in your godliness. So whether you ever end up preaching or teaching, you're safe putting your focus of concern here. And then if God does have another role for you, this will be the context out of which the recognition will come by the people of God.

31:06 A man who is to be a minister must be eminent in piety. Every Christian must be godly, or he has reason to question whether he's saved. There's not a thing mentioned in 1 Timothy 3 or in Titus 1 that is not mentioned as a requirement for every believer in some other part of Scripture. And I've actually traced out all those words and found the mention of all other believers.

31:27 But though they are a standard to which every believer presses, they must in some measure be already attained in the man who would take the office of the ministry. In some measure, all of these graces must be manifested in some degree of harmony, maturity, and balance. Now it's a crime that this element of the call to the Christian ministry has been overlooked. People have been silent upon it.

31:57 But I believe if we're thinking biblically, we cannot miss the tremendous thrust that this is indeed a definite requirement, the realm of graces. Now you see, if this is true, and a man has this growing desire for the Christian ministry, he's not marking time. Waiting till all those lucky people out there will wake up and realize that he's called of God. He's working at the cultivation of those graces right where he is, right in his present circumstance.

32:29 And frankly, man, this is one of the things I look for with an eagle eye. Now let me in on two secrets now. This is one of the things I look for. I look to see if in your present circle of usefulness, or apparent lack of usefulness, you are concerned with the full-blown display of true grace.

32:51 If not, then I'm suspicious, terribly suspicious, of whether or not this desire is indeed born of right motives. All right, then the third thing, and of course none of these things, we're touching them in an exhaustive way, or developing them exhaustively. The third element of a true biblical ordinary call to the ministry will be gifts, which indicate divine provision. Not only desire born of right motives, graces indicating genuine, mature Christian experience, but there must be gifts indicating divine provision.

Element 3: Gifts Indicating Divine Provision

33:37 And at this point, let me use a silly illustration to show that desire and graces are not enough. We touched on it last week. Let me amplify. Did I use the illustration about the five-foot-two-inch, 115-pound guy?

33:52 Did I? Oh, well, I'll repeat it. You ought to remember that one. Some of you do remember.

33:57 You see, here's the fellow that he's gone to see his alma mater, and they're playing their typical homecoming game on Thanksgiving Day, and he wants his team to win so bad he can taste it. No, I mean just everything in him. He just wants, and he's got desire, man, he's got pounds of desire. He just wants them to schmox him right off the field and really win the ball game.

34:19 And this other team has got a good tackle and a bone-crushing, see, I'm reverting, showing my age. I was going to say halfback. You don't have any such thing anymore. He's got a good running back or a tailback, and they're pounding off right tackle, five yards, seven yards a clip, and everything in this guy just wants to go out there and plug up that hole.

34:39 But the one big problem is he's five-foot-two and he weighs 115 pounds, and all the desire in the world isn't going to stop six-foot-four, 270-pound offensive tackle. I don't care how much desire he's got. There's just nothing that's going to make up for that lack of ability. He does not have the physical stature necessary to channel that desire in any kind of a meaningful way.

35:06 Now, this is true with regard to the calls of the Christian ministry. There must be evidence that God has endowed a man with sufficient gifts, hence my phrase, gifts, indicating divine provision. Now, when you put this in the context of Ephesians 4, when Christ ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. He gave some pastors and teachers for the edifying of the body of Christ.

35:41 Now, it's unthinkable to me that Christ would give to his church for edification, those who don't have the necessary equipage to edify, but who become a source of painful suffering to the people of God week after week when they try to listen to them preach, who are a source of disappointment when they go to counsel with them, because they don't have sufficient God-given wisdom or sufficient God-given gifts of utterance to be a means of edification. I can't believe the Lord Jesus punishes his church in the place of that kind. I can't believe that. And so, when I hear some men speak and they say they're called of God, I have to say one of two things.

36:25 Either they have so sinned as to grieve away the spirit that he's withdrawn their gifts, or they were never equipped by the Lord in the first place. And I'm forced to one of those two conclusions. And so, let me indicate or try to indicate some of the areas in which these gifts must be present. First of all, there are gifts relative to what I'm calling spiritual savvy.

36:54 If we're going to use the biblical term, it would be gifts of wisdom. Wisdom, thou granted, age, experience, hard knocks, sharing with others, increases a man's store of wisdom. But if a man has not been given in some special and in some measure abundant way the gift of spiritual wisdom, to be able to look at this problem in its various factors and see, well, this relates to this, this way, and this to this, and in the light of the principles of the Word, this is how we attack it. He cannot be an experimental preacher. He cannot apply the Word.

37:36 He cannot rightly divide or literally cut a straight course in the Word of truth. He'll be laying a promise on in the wrong place. It'll be like a poor woman trying to sew a dress who doesn't know the difference between a sleeve and the bodice, between a buttonhole and a hem. I mean, she's going to make a mess of it.

37:56 Give her the most beautiful piece of material, and she's going to end up with a grotesque product. And so it is with the person who has not been given this gift of spiritual savvy, this matter of general spiritual wisdom. And this is partly intellectual, and it's partly spiritual. And therefore, I can't put it under the head of intellectual.

38:19 I'm going to touch on that in a moment. It fits under both. I've met some men whose IQ was probably just about 110 or 20, but they had great spiritual wisdom. In the realm of spiritual perception, they were able to do what only a man with an IQ of 145 or 50 could do in other realms.

38:41 God had taken what was there and had poured such grace and enablement that they got far more miles per gallon than they should have with their present intellectual capacities. Now, this is a hard thing to put one's finger upon. But again, it's one of the things that one looks for. And frankly, men, I look for this in those of you who've confessed that you aspire to the ministry.

39:06 And I'm listening constantly, trying to reflect, to see if this something is beginning to come to light. Because in the ministry, particularly in the role of a pastor, without this, you're just going to botch things up time after time after time after time after time. Someone comes to you, and they begin to lay out their problem, and you're crying out, oh, God, help me to sort out the different strands of this. Give me wisdom to know what applies.

39:34 And if there is not some God-given faculty of general spiritual savvy to know how to come at that problem, how to come at that problem between that brother and that sister that are at one another's throats, with this one that's discouraged, you see, you cannot function to the good of God's people. You can do it. And so this is a very fundamental spiritual gift necessary for the office of the ministry. Then secondly, there are those gifts that I'm calling the intellectual gifts.

40:05 And they're not purely intellectual, but they do greatly involve the matter of the intellect. Owen has some statements on this that are most perceptive, and it would take too much time to read them. But let me just try to summarize poorly, but I hope at least accurately. It doesn't have the beauty of Owen.

40:24 But Owen was saying to have such a grasp upon the word of God that one sees the wholeness of divine truth, the interrelatedness of one truth to another, so as to be able to expand this part without canceling this, to be able to show the connection between truths as well as the distinction between them. Owen goes on to say, this is no task for the novice. This is no task for the man to whom God has not given the sufficient intellectual breadth necessary for such an assimilation of the total message of Scripture, as well as the interrelatedness of the various facets of Scripture.

41:12 And then he goes on to say, and I think this is a helpful distinction, some may have a great gift at exhortation. They take a proven interpretation of Scripture, and taking that proven interpretation, they may have great ability to exhort the people of God in various areas of the implication of that truth. But he's said to be an interpreter of the word, which is what a teaching elder is, to be one who goes to get the right interpretation, the right meaning of Scripture. Owen goes on to say, this is the task of the man who's become in his own right a theologian, who sees the interrelatedness of divine truth,

42:00 who sees the connection and distinction between the various parts of Holy Scripture. And I believe this distinction, again, a la Owen, is a very valid and a very helpful one. Now, this is why, in situations where we allow someone who is not ordained to take the pulpit, and why, generally speaking, before they ever go into the pulpit, I check with them to see what they're speaking on, to make sure that they're in an area where the basic interpretation is according to a sound hermeneutical principle, is according to the generally accepted meaning of that passage by the most able and godly commentators. Now, you see the distinction, if you find it helpful, I have found it helpful.

42:49 So there may be men in the assembly who have a gift of exhortation, who can take the truths established by a painstaking exegetical teaching elder, and using that as his fuel, may be able to have a gift of exhortation to the assembly. And I think that distinction is seen in Romans 12, where Paul says, he that teachth give himself to his teaching, he that exhorteth to his exhortation, indicating that not every teacher will have the gift of exhortation, not every exhorter will have the gift of teaching. But if one is aspiring to the office of the Christian ministry, to becoming a leading teaching elder, one who labors in the Word and in doctrine, there must be evidence that God has endowed him,

43:37 not only with the gift of spiritual savvy, but the intellectual breadth and balance to grasp the wholeness and the interrelatedness of divine truth. At this point, let me quote from Bridges, who also quotes from Orr. The surface perusal of a few books, as Dr. Owenwell observes, is thought sufficient to make any man wise enough to be a minister, and not a few undertake ordinarily to be teachers of others who would scarcely be admitted as tolerable disciples in a well-ordered church.

44:23 You know what I'm saying? Here people up in the pulpit teaching others who in a well-ordered church would hardly make it into the membership. But there belongeth more unto this wisdom, knowledge, and understanding than most men are aware of, where the nature of it duly considered and with all the necessity of it to the ministry of the gospel, probably some would not rush on the work as they do, which they have no provision or ability for the performance of. It is in brief, and now here we have this statement, in which he summarizes what I've been trying to give you here.

44:58 Such a comprehension of the scope and the end of Scripture, of the revelation of God therein, such an acquaintance with the system of particular doctrinal truth in their rise, tendency, and use, such a habit of mind in judging of spiritual things and comparing them one with another, such a distinct insight into the springs and course of the mystery of the love, grace, and will of God in Christ as enables them, in whom these things are, to declare the counsel of God, to make known the way of life, of faith, and obedience to others, and instruct them in their whole duty to God and man therein. Pretty comprehensive and sweetly.

45:45 And he says this is necessary. This is bound up in the phrase, able to teach. An apt teacher, if he's to teach with aptness, must have this balanced comprehensive grasp upon the word of truth. This is why, frankly, I'm not in any hurry to shove men off the seminary.

46:07 I believe that there are certain disciplines which can be gained in this attainment intellectually, which the seminary can give. But I'm also convinced there are certain facets of this which imperceptibly are being absorbed in a sound expository ministry week in and week out, without which a man cannot rightly relay himself to the seminary disciplines. And therefore I'm not in any hurry. And it's not because I'm selfish and afraid to lose a few members.

46:41 There is calculated spiritual strategy in all of this. God's not in a hurry to furnish a mind with the intellectual attainments necessary to be a sound and able expositor of the word. It only comes in the long call. Patience is a virtue, you know the old saying.

47:01 Find it if you can. Sell them in a woman. Never in, and I want to add an adjective, never in a young man. The mark of youth is impetuosity.

47:12 Lord, get on with the job. Turn me loose upon the church. The Lord says, just hold your horses. I'm in no hurry.

47:22 I want to furnish you well to make you an able minister of the new covenant that you may be able rightly to divide the word of truth. So that's the second area in which there will be gifts indicating divine provision, spiritual savvy, general spiritual wisdom. Secondly, the intellectual attainments, and then thirdly, there will be evidence of gifts of utterance. Since a great part of the work of a teaching elder is to labor in the word and in doctrine, 1 Timothy chapter 3 says he must be an apt teacher.

48:06 Titus 1 says he must be able to convince and to exhort the gainsayers. 2 Timothy 2 2 says he must be a faithful man who is able to teach others. And the word able, of course, is the word from which we get our English word, ability. So we're dealing now with God's giving to men gifts of utterance.

48:31 Now whenever God calls a man for a particular task, he endows him with the necessary gifts for the task. When you turn to Exodus 31, you see how God has purposed to have a tabernacle raised up, and he's given directions to Moses. So it says he filled basileal with the spirit of wisdom and understanding in cunning craftsmanship. Here they needed someone wise enough to take the plans given in the mountain and to implement them.

49:04 So what does God do? He fills a man with the spirit, conferring the necessary gifts to accomplish the task. Now it's unthinkable to me that God will do this to erect something of skins and boards and these other physical things in the building of a physical dwelling place and that he will not do it in the erection of the spiritual temple of which Jesus Christ himself is the chief cornerstone. No, if he's calling a man to build in his temple, he will fill him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding.

49:44 He will fill him with the gifts of utterance, making him able to perform his God-given task. Now Spurgeon has some very pointed and very helpful things to say, and I quote now from his lectures to his students on page 28 and 9. He says, in the second place, combined with the earnest desire to become a pastor, there must be aptness to teach and some measure of the other qualities needful for the office of a public instructor. Then he goes on to say, a man must not consider that he's called to preach until he's proven that he can speak.

50:30 God did not create behemoth, elephants to fly, and should Leviathan have a strong desire to ascend with the lark, it would evidently be an unwise aspiration since he is not furnished with wings. And if a man be called to preach, he will be endowed with a degree of speaking ability, which he will cultivate and increase. If the gift of utterance be not there in a measure at the first, it is not likely that it will ever be developed. Then he goes on to give one of his humorous illustrations.

51:06 He said, I heard of a gentleman who had a most intense desire to preach, and he pressed his request upon his minister until after a multitude of rebuffs, he obtained permission to preach a trial sermon. That opportunity was the end of his importunity, for upon announcing his text, he found himself bereft of every idea but one, which he delivered with great feeling, and then descended from the rostrum. This was his sermon. My brethren, said he, if any of you think it an easy thing to preach, I advise you to come up here and have all the conceit taken out of you.

51:41 And then he sat down. The trial of your powers will go far to reveal to you your deficiency if you have not the needed ability. I know of nothing better. We must give ourselves a fair trial in this matter, or we cannot assuredly know whether God has called us or not, and during the probation we must often ask ourselves whether upon the whole we can hope to edify others with such discourses.

52:06 And brethren, this is where I plead with you to cry for the grace of honesty. If your desires are born of right motives to edify the people of God, then you will be willing to receive the judgment of a godly people. And when that judgment comes to you directly or through the elders where you are, and they say, look, brother, we love you, we believe you're a godly man, but we can't make hider tales out of what you're getting at when you speak. That you'll listen to that.

52:40 And you won't say, oh, there's a bunch of dumb bunnies, but they'd only have your insight, my profound insights. That's what it is. I'm too profound for them. Well, then you may be.

52:50 You may be. But then you're profound for anybody else, too. And so the best thing you can do is lock yourself up with reams of paper and then pound out your profundities upon a typewriter and sell them to some kind of a publisher who will put them in the archives of some great intellectual center. But please don't torture the people of God by standing up and committing a form of mental and spiritual rape upon them week after week in which they cannot follow what you're saying, in which they cannot sense the thrust of the word of God coming through you.

53:27 Now, I don't mean to be unkind. I hope you all know me well enough to know that I think the years and the grace of God have put a little bit of the milk of human kindness within my breast. But I do want to be forceful at this point. Now, having been forceful, let me qualify.

53:45 I am not saying that a man should not aspire to the ministry until he has greatly cultivated his gift. Even Timothy, who had an extraordinary call by prophecy, remember, stir up the gift that is in me, which was given to me by prophecy, he was an extraordinary office bearer. He was an evangelist. To do the work of an evangelist he was told.

54:07 So he had an extraordinary call. If even a man with an extraordinary call to an extraordinary office had to have someone say, stir up the gift of God that is in me, neglect not the gift that is in me, that thy profiting may be manifest to all, I am not saying that you must somehow come on the scene and preach your first sermon like Spurgeon preaches last. No, no, but I am saying with Spurgeon that if God has given you the basic tools of public utterance, those tools will be generally evident to the discerning people of God the first time you speak. And if the first time you're so nervous, it'll leak out the second or third time.

54:51 Now, this is why, as young men begin to progress in their seminary training and show some definite desire and some graces so that we feel that people will not be turned off when they stand up in the pulpit by what they've seen in their lives in general, that we try to give a fellow some recurring opportunities because all of us have our off days. And it's not fair. I can put an off day in the context of five on days and get by. Well, a poor fellow may have his one time and it's an off day for him.

55:25 So we feel he's got to have other opportunities. But if after the course of three or four times preaching here to as hungry and sympathetic and auditory as one has in this congregation, and I speak out of a broad range of experience, there are few congregations more sympathetic and hungry for the word than this. Well, if a man can't rise to that and have some facility of utterance so that he started somewhere, went somewhere and got there and the people know it and are blessed as they started with him, came along and arrived at that conclusion, then I think in an act of piety, as Bridges says, to inform that man that at this stage, we're not saying that the story's closed yet,

56:12 at this stage we do not feel God has endowed him with sufficient gifts of utterance to be a blessing to the people of God. Now, he can still covet the gift of utterance. He can still pray for the gift of utterance, 1 Corinthians 14. But he must not assume that he is ready to take the role of an officer as a teaching elder until the gift is sufficiently developed.

Element 4: Opportunity Indicating Providential Approval

56:39 He must be an apt teacher before he is set apart for the office. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he must at that point have become an apt teacher before the desire will be realized in the appointment to the office. Then, in the fourth place, and this is omitted by Spurgeon, I believe, except when he quotes Newton, but it is emphasized by Newton, by Bridges, I believe by Matthew Henry in a quote that I have with which I'll close, the fourth indication of an ordinary call to the ministry will be an opportunity to minister indicating providential approval,

57:30 or the approval of providence. Here's a man who has desired, born of right motives. God has endowed him and enabled him to cultivate the graces of genuine mature Christian experience. It's evident to him and to others that he has gifts indicating that the head of the church has endowed him with that general wisdom, the intellectual grasp upon the truth, a gift and facility of utterance.

58:01 But there seems to be no open door to preach. What does he do? Well, it's at this point that he must wait the opportunity, indicating that God's time has now come in the evidence of providential factors. Now, Newton gives counsel to the young man who writes to him concerning this matter of the call to the ministry, and he tells an incident from his own life.

58:30 He says, well, let me read his section here. I think it's so helpful. That which evidence is a proper call is a correspondent opening in providence, a gradual train of circumstances pointing out the means, the time, the place of actually entering upon the work. Until this coincidence arrives, you must not expect to be always clear from hesitation in your own mind.

58:57 The principal caution on this head is not to be too hasty in catching at first appearances. If it be the Lord's will to bring you into the ministry, he's already appointed your place and service. And though you do not know it at present, you shall at a proper time. If you had the talents of an angel, you could do no good till his hour has come and until he leads you to the people whom he has determined to bless by means of your ministry.

59:29 He says, now it's difficult to restrain ourselves within the bounds of prudence when our zeal is warm and a sense of love of Christ is upon our hearts and we have a compassion for poor sinners. But he that believeth shall not make haste. He quotes from the book of Isaiah. Then he tells in his own incident that there was five years from the time he was convinced God had called him and equipped him before there was an opening in providence.

59:55 Then he says, looking back, had he run then, he could see how a whole different train of events would have followed and time had proven that it was the part of spiritual wisdom to wait upon the opening in the providence of God. Now Matthew Henry says in a footnote in Bridges, page 96, for those of you who have the book, we must not be forward to put forth ourselves in the exercise of spiritual gifts. Pride often appears in this under the pretense of a desire to be useful. If the motive be correct, it is good, but humility will wait for a call.

60:40 And by that event, humility will wait for the place of God's opening. And so I submit to you men that if God is calling you, if he has furnished you for the work of the ministry, he has done so as the great superintendent of the work of the church, and he has a people, a sphere of ministry which he is preparing for you. And if we can't believe that a sovereign God who equips us will bring us to the place for which he's equipped us, then I'll have to become an atheist. If I couldn't believe that, I'd just hang up my spikes now.

61:17 That's why I don't lose any sleep about, Lord, shall I stay on in the church there in Essex Fells for another year. I don't lose an ounce of sleep over that. For all intents and purposes, I'm here till God bullies me out of here by a string of providences that indicate that he has some other design than that I should labor in the place where, by a peculiar collection and interaction of many providences, he brought me to labor in the cause of the truth of Christ. And a man who fights the dispositions of providence is going to find himself a Jonah, and he'll feel something of the sting of his disobedience in the chastisement of God.

Summary and Closing Encouragement

62:00 Now, in all of these things, as I summarize and close, and then we'll open it up for discussion, let me emphasize again that the emphasis in your own life upon one or the other of these things will be different. I think of one dear friend of mine, whom many of us were convinced had the gifts and the graces for the Christian ministry, but he was so scared of running unsent he just wouldn't go. And so he stayed five years working in the business he was in. But you know, my wife and I were talking the other night, when he finally submitted to the judgment greatly of the church.

62:37 His own desire was very feeble. But knowing his own temperament, that he was diffident and backwards, he said, well, I'll just have to put much more stock on what the people of God say. And when he finally did go, he's been out now for about ten years, and there's been nothing but a trail of blessing wherever that man has put his foot. Blessing has come, a little work of some thirty people built up into a thriving church, same thing going on in the church where he's laboring now out in the far west.

63:07 I think of this in contrast to others who have run unsent, who have bullied themselves into a place of ministry. And when I see little congregation shriveling under the ministry and the sourness and the disappointment and the disillusionment, my heart cries out, Lord, help me to spare your people of the blight of the ministry of an uncalled man. And so if I seem in earnest about this, my brethren, it's because I am, because so much is at stake, and nothing would thrill me more that if in the course of years here God will send out a stream of young men to the ministry upon whom his evident blessing rests. But I should rather that not one go out unsent, uncalled of God,

63:54 than that we have ten dozen upon whom there is no seal of divine approval in their labors in the gospel of Christ. Well, let me break it off there. There's much more that could be said, but I trust that this has been a balanced and comprehensive overview of the essential elements of what constitutes a call to the Christian ministry.